A brown bag discussion set for October 29 will examine research on Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. The program, “Ike and Dutch: Mentor, Protege and Common Sense,” will be led by author Gene Kopelson. It is scheduled for noon in the Visitors Center Auditorium of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Kopelson’s talk is one of the major themes of his forthcoming book, Reagan’s 1968 Dress Rehearsal: Ike, RFK, and Reagan’s Emergence as a World Statesman, to be released in 2016 by University of Southern California Figueroa Press. According to Kopelson, the book will include newly discovered historical information that behind the scenes Dwight Eisenhower was Ronald Reagan’s hidden political mentor.

Kopelson is president of the New England chapter and on the Board of Trustees of the Theodore Roosevelt Association. As a historian, he has published works on Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, Ronald Reagan’s 1966 campaign and Mexican American voters, the 1968 Nebraska and Oregon Republican primaries, and Washington State Republican politics in the 1960s. He and his wife Mindy update teacher-student books and video teaching trunks at the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle.